


Notebooks in the Safehouse

by Bouzingo



Category: Marvel
Genre: Agoraphobia, Big Crushes, Bucky is confused about food, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Stress Baking, Stress Cleaning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-04
Updated: 2014-08-04
Packaged: 2018-02-11 16:39:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2075388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bouzingo/pseuds/Bouzingo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Winter Soldier hunkers in his bunker. Sam Wilson won't try to coax him out, but he can at least visit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Notebooks in the Safehouse

Sam Wilson comes to the Winter Soldier and puts a small notebook down in front of him along with a ballpoint pen. The Winter Soldier stares at the pen and tries not to think about how to kill people with it.

“What’s this,” he mutters. He doesn’t look at Sam at all.

“It’s blank,” Sam says. “You’re going to write all the things you like in it. You’re going to fill it.”

“What if I like blank notebooks,” The Winter Soldier says.

“Then you can get another, after you’ve filled that one,” Sam says, “Smartass.”

“And how do I…” he falters, because maybe this is a test, and he doesn’t know what happens if he fails it.

“You have to try things to find out what you like,” Sam says. “So it’s all right if you don’t know right now.”

He grasps the pen in his left hand and stares at the first blank page, determined to write something down. But there is nothing. The sound of splintering plastic alerts him to the fact that he was holding the pen far too tightly in a metal hand that can take off car doors without any strain.

“Sorry about your pen,” he says, carefully setting the pieces aside. No ink is leaking out, but it’s still a mess.

“Man, it’s fine. They come in packs of twenty now,” Sam says, and the Winter Soldier can hear the smile in his voice. Sam smiles like it is easy. The Winter Soldier practices in the mirror sometimes and knows it is anything but.

Sam doesn’t come all the time. The safehouse is only safe because Avengers and soldiers don’t drop by on a regular basis. But the fourth time Sam comes in, he brings bags of food, already prepared and warm.

“Hey, how’s the list?” he says. The Winter Soldier opens the notebook on the table and reveals it is blank. “So blank notebooks are your thing, huh.”

The Winter Soldier doesn’t answer, and watches while Sam unpacks the food. It smells like spices and heat. Most of the Winter Soldier’s nutrition had been intravenous or else dispensed in small white pills, sometimes lukewarm shakes the consistency of thin syrup and strips of dried meat so his digestive system wouldn’t shut down completely. Flavour was not an aspect of nutrition his handlers took into consideration, and it is something he does not take into account while preparing food from the tin in the safehouse.

“I brought Indian,” Sam says. “Nothing too hot. I know how you thirties Irish boys are with their spice and what have you. Heard you don’t eat meat much, so I got it from a vegetarian place. Have you had sag paneer?”

“No,” the Winter Soldier says, stands up to get two plates and two forks, since it looks like Sam wants to eat with him. “How did you know I don’t eat meat?”

“Natasha told me,” Sam says. “Should she not have?”

“I don’t know,” the Winter Soldier says, sits with his plate in front of him. He is wary of Sam knowing his inability to eat meat, which Natasha promised him was not uncommon and therefore not actually a defect. So it is a defect to be wary of Sam knowing about it.

Thankfully, Sam doesn’t pursue the subject. Instead he dishes up, and breaks off a piece of flatbread to go on the Winter Soldier’s plate, which seems to be mostly sauces and rice. He doesn’t know how to eat this; his fork seems inadequate. Sam’s using a spoon and the bread, and the Winter Soldier copies his movements carefully, transferring some of the green sauce, the sag paneer, into his mouth.

It’s an odd texture in his mouth, but nearly everything is. The taste is not overwhelming, and far more harmonious than the meals he makes for himself.

“You like it?” Sam says with a grin. The Winter Soldier stares at the food.

“I don’t know,” he says frustrated. Nobody told him how to like something, what to like. He was given insufficient data to complete his objective.

“When was the last time you went out?” Sam asks, frowning.

“I have no need to,” the Winter Soldier says. He feels that the response is adequate.

“So you’ve been hunkered in your bunker for months without going outside? Man, aren’t you curious about the city? How it’s changed? You could take the time out to expand on the list.”

“You gave me incomplete parameters when you told me to write the list,” the Winter Soldier finally says, forcing himself to look at Sam’s face. “I don’t have the skillset.”

“You don’t know what you like?” Sam says quietly. The Winter Soldier nods. He feels inadequate and broken because he knows how to kill people in innumerable ways but he can’t fulfill an objective that is simple even for children. “Wanna go outside after food?”

The Winter Soldier shakes his head immediately. Going out is not an option. He has enough tinned food to last him one more year, if he’s careful, and he plans on being extremely careful.

Sam doesn’t press the matter, just pulls something out of his rather large bag. A manpurse, he calls it, like that makes the bag less ridiculously big.

“Brought my favourite films. Figured you haven’t been taking the time to catch up,” Sam says. “Which do you want to start with?”

The Winter Soldier looks at the discs set in front of him and frowns. He is familiar with film, having shot at least two marks in a cinema (memories of a small blond man, the man on the bridge, happily pressing a ticket in his hand and saying something about the best year in film yet!), but this is alien to him.

It also occurs to him that Sam plans on staying for a lot longer than people usually do, and he really doesn’t mind.

“You choose,” he mumbles. “I have no preference.”

They end up watching something called Fantasia on the small screen that the Winter Soldier’s safehouse contains. There is no story with this film. A man with no face in front of an orchestra explains that it is actually several smaller films within a large one. The Winter Soldier prefers that; following the thread of his own story is confusing enough to keep track of.

It starts out fairly abstract, and then there are drawings that tell a glimmer of a story set to music. He recognizes the Mouse, it is impossible not to, but there is very little else he can connect to a memory of any sort, and that is comforting as well.

The Winter Soldier gets up in the middle of the dinosaur sequence and writes in the notebook Fantasia. Sam sees but he doesn’t comment, though a smile perks his lips.

—

Sam tries to visit Bucky more after that, when it becomes clear that his only source of entertainment is the people who drop by his safehouse. There are days where he isn’t sure Bucky notices after initially letting him in. Those are the days where he’s curled up on the couch and staring at the wall and should not be touched. Sam keeps chatting with him anyway on those days, puts on a movie. He doesn’t like the thought of anyone being alone with their memories like that.

The list grows. Bucky shows him every time he visits. It feels like a mission report, maybe to both of them. Maybe that’s why Bucky does it, because it’s like a mission and he finds that familiar.

And then one day as Sam is climbing the five flights of stairs up to Bucky’s safehouse, which is in fact a shitty apartment in the middle of New York, he bumps into someone coming down.

“Oof, sorry,” he says, smiling before he realizes it’s Bucky. “Oh hey! I was just on my way up! You going out?”

Bucky is wearing a large hoodie that would cover his hands, which are stuck in the pockets of some skinny black jeans he can’t have bought for himself.

“Mrs. Nugent downstairs is making cookies,” Bucky says, as though that explains everything. “You can come.”

Mrs. Nugent, it turns out, is sweet, quite soft-spoken, and she doesn’t see very well. Bucky quietly hands her things, gives her the sugar when she reaches for the flour, and measures out quantities for her. She talks more than enough for the both of them, and actually makes him smile, a grin so weak it could be dishwater.

“And who’s the handsome fella you brought with you, James?” she asks. Sam laughs and looks at Bucky, who’s blushing and staring at his feet.

“Sam Wilson, ma’am. I’m a friend,” he says.

“Well, if you’re a friend, you can call me Clarice,” she smiles, while Bucky mechanically rolls the dough into small balls and puts them on a baking sheet. “Are you spacing those out evenly, James?”

“Yes Mrs. Nugent,” Bucky says. “Putting them in the oven now.”

“There’s a lad. Come sit down while they bake.”

Bucky does, Sam following, and they listen to Mrs. Nugent talk about her day for a good half hour until the cookies are ready. Bucky carefully takes them out of the oven and puts them on the stovetop.

“I’m going to go now, Mrs. Nugent,” he says.

“All right, dear. I’ll send some up like usual. You have a good day now.”

Sam hangs back, though Bucky leaves quite abruptly, door shutting quietly behind him.

“You must be a very good friend,” Mrs. Nugent says. Sam shrugs.

“I try,” he says. “Does he often come to help you?”

“Oh yes, every week on the button,” Mrs. Nugent smiles. “I think he’s lonely. Is he very ill?”

“Ill?”

“I know the type,” she says sadly. “They get the diagnosis, and then find somewhere away from their family to die. We’ve had a few in this building. Not usually so young, though.”

“Oh,” Sam says. “He’s not dying. He’s um… he’s working through some stuff right now. I should probably go with him.”

“He thinks you’re quite handsome, you know, Sam Wilson,” Mrs. Nugent says before Sam leaves. “And he’s not too hard on the eyes either.”

Sam falters, and then finally leaves, wondering if that elderly woman actually told him Bucky had a crush.

Upstairs, Bucky is cleaning his apartment. Sam learned early on that clean spaces are very important to Bucky. He’s shed his giant hoodie and is wearing a dark grey tank top that clings to his chest and muscles in just the right way. Sam does not think that should be as hot as it is.

“Hey, so is helping Mrs. Nugent about as busy as your day gets?” Sam asks. Bucky pauses from his work on the windowsill, and nods. “Didn’t think you left the apartment.”

“I can’t for very long,” Bucky says. “I managed an hour on the roof once. That was nice. I liked that.”

He looks pleased with himself for saying it out loud, and finishes cleaning the windowsill.

“So what do you talk about with Mrs. Nugent?” Sam asks. Bucky blushes again, and it is a good look on him. “The good old days?”

“No, we,” Bucky falters, drums his flesh fingers against his metal arm. “Um.”

“Dude, it’s fine,” Sam says gently. Bucky nods, relieved, and goes back to cleaning.

—

“You should tell him,” Natasha says when she next visits. Her visits are more common than Sam’s, and come with pierogi and once vodka before James decided he didn’t like alcohol, the taste or the effects.

“I don’t want to,” James says with a touch more petulance than he intended. “He will stop visiting.”

“Or he might visit more,” Natasha points out. “He’s very kind to you. Is it so hard to believe he likes you too?”

“Yes,” James says. “He is kind because he is a kind person. Eventually he will lose interest.”

“That doesn’t sound like Sam at all,” Natasha says with a frown. “What’s really going on?”

James doesn’t answer immediately. He eats a pierogi and looks out the window at the city below.

“I would like for him to know,” he says presently. “But lovers step out.”

The whole complex is safe now, due to James’ efforts, born from boredom of his situation. Now he can move freely throughout the building for any amount of time, even the roof and its garden.

He feels the accomplishment is less impressive for people who walk through the city on a daily basis and sometimes fight alongside superheroes. Sam is so brave, he doesn’t even have any enhancements to make hits from monsters hurt less.

“Lovers often stay in,” Natasha proposes. James sighs.

“I want to be better,” he says. He does not clarify how he wants to be better, in health or in goodness. Natasha takes what she needs from the statement.

“You have a crush,” she says, “and it’s adorable, and you should tell him.”

—

“I saw you on the television,” James says the next time Sam visits.

It’s a sunny day and he’s actually opened the window and thrown open the curtains, though tactically that’s not very responsible at all. In his hitherto neglected oven, cookies are baking and they smell great. James wonders if Sam can tell that he made more of a baseline effort with his appearance.

“Yeah, that was pretty weird,” Sam says, “I’ve been used to secret missions, I guess.”

“It was nice to see you again,” James says in a burst. Sam raises an eyebrow at this, and James feels the next words stick in his throat. This is part of the reason he liked seeing Sam on the television, because he didn’t have those beautiful eyes trained on him and it is far easier to appreciate Sam Wilson from afar.

“I’m going to check on the cookies,” James says. There are cookies in another state, in another country, that I have to check on. Sorry. You’re too perfect he does NOT say.

He checks his cookies, recalibrates his arm maybe ten times, combs his hair, and then turns around to try and face Sam, only to find that he’s already there.

“Cookies are doing fine,” James says, swallowing drily.

“Man, spit it out,” Sam says with a smile that makes James’ heart batter in his throat. “Something’s eating you.”

James attempts a smile as easy as Sam’s, and the way Sam’s grin strains when he tries tells him how well he did. So he pulls the notebook from his pocket and shoves it in Sam’s hands.

“I like you,” he says, mostly to his feet. “I like that you bring food I haven’t tried before and you come over a lot and you don’t ask when I’m going to go out. I like how you’re brave but you don’t even know, you just… You just do good things.”

“Okay,” Sam says, “okay, that’s a lot. How are you feeling?”

“Like I’ve been poisoned,” James says helplessly, blushes when Sam laughs, not maliciously.

“How long have you been sitting on this?” he says.

“Maybe a couple months,” James says, frowning. “I wanted to wait until I was fixed, but it’s taking too long and I just like you more. I know it’s not the done thing.”

“You time-travelers from Brooklyn are all the same,” Sam says. “I’ll just put you out of your misery and tell you that I like you plenty, as well. So what now?”

“I don’t know,” James says. He didn’t get this far in his projections of how this meeting would go. “I was going to give you cookies while I figured it out.” 

“Okay,” Sam says. “Cookies first.”


End file.
